Fresh air, fun and now same-sex dancing; Blackpool is endlessly inventive when it comes to a having thoroughly good time.

Beset by angst from time to time, quite unnecessarily, the Queen of the UK's coastal resorts is putting on its glamour for the start of the 'off' season, though no season is ever really off on the Fylde.

The Sugar Dandies who reached the semi-final of Britain's Got Talent have organised the town's first international same-sex dancing contest on Saturday 27 October. Older readers may recall that this was the date of the second great anti-Vietnam march in London in 1968. Why not celebrate that in this different but equally liberating way?

Getting it together: Dandies Bradley and Soren Stauffer-Kruse

Watching is as much fun as taking part in any ballroom spectacular at Blackpool, especially in the entirely OTT surroundings of the Spanish Hall where the event will be staged. Ballroom, Latin and Show dancing are all on the agenda and the effect, say the organisers, will be 'sparkling and sizzling'. My word.

Bradley Stauffer-Kruse, who forms the Dandies with his partner Soren, says:

We are very excited about launching this spectacular competition in Blackpool. The town is the mecca for dancers so all our competitors are really looking forward to this.

We personally love Blackpool so we can't think of a better place to be. It has the best structures for ballroom dance and it means so much to us to be welcomed in the world-renowned Winter Gardens. We really hope this is the start of an annual event to go alongside all of Blackpool's other wonderful festivals.

Soren chimes in:

We love Blackpool and we always get such a lovely warm welcome there so we just know this is going to be great.

Competitors already registered include both the current Female Same-Sex European Ballroom (standard) Champions and the Male Same-Sex European Ballroom (standard) Champions along with dancers from Austria, Greece, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and throughout the UK. The standard will be high and the international judging panel, including Strictly Come Dancing winner Matthew Cutler, will be demanding.

Other activities in Blackpool that weekend including a social dance on Sunday 28th organised by London's lesbian and gay dance club the Pink Jukebox and a tour of Blackpool's ballrooms and "Palaces of Pleasure" led by the great authority from Sheffield, Prof Vanessa Toulmin. Spectator tickets for the Same Sex Open are £18.50 (£16.00 for UKSSDC members) and can be purchased from the organisers here, Blackpool Tourist Information Centre online here or 01253 478222, or by 'phoning the Winter Gardens Box Office on 0844 856 1111.More details of the event and where to stay et al here and here.

As well as the stars, the competition has a beginners/starters class. Entry info here.

Blackpool illuminations' Showboat. There will be MUCH more like this. Photograph: Alamy

Meanwhile, more details are emerging about the greatest of Blackpool traditions, the switching on of the Illuminations, on Friday 31 August. It's centenary year for the spectacular display which will shine until Mischief Night, 4 November, stretch five miles and bring in 3,000,000 visitors and an estimated £275 million for an outlay of £2.4 million. Good northern economics.

The actual switcher-on's identity will be secret until much closer to the event, but Blackpool singer-songwriter Karima Francis, boyband Loveable Rogues, girl group Vanquish and vocal harmony group The Overtones have just been added to the line-up of performers during Switch-on Week which already figures girl-band Little Mix (winners of the X-Factor), Lemar, Amy MacDonald, Lawson, Paloma Faith, Scouting For Girls and Noisettes. The Switch-on is at the Headland for the first time this year.

Nostalgic note. Strictly Come Demonstrating: here's a harkback to how we spent 27 October in 1968. The writer - spied on by a Guardian photographer seven years before joining the paper - is the one with fair hair but unsparkling dark clothes under the second flag.